Smart and Sustainable Urban Futures: Integrating Planning, Participation, and Policy Innovation
A special issue of Urban Science (ISSN 2413-8851).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 September 2026 | Viewed by 65
Special Issue Editor
Interests: sustainable and resilient development; urban and regional science; urban and spatial planning; spatial cognition and spatial thinking; decision support systems; fuzzy cognitive mapping; complex adaptive systems; agent based modeling; disaster and risk planning and management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue explores how cities can advance smart and sustainable urban futures by aligning planning, participation, and policy innovation across diverse contexts and scales. We welcome conceptual, empirical, methodological, and practice-oriented contributions from any discipline that illuminate pathways to more sustainable, resilient, equitable, and data-informed urban governance and design.
Submissions may draw on any theoretical lens or method—quantitative, qualitative, mixed, or experimental. Illustrative (not exhaustive) examples include: urban sustainability and resilience (including transformative change), Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS), climate neutrality and just transitions, governance and policy design, mobility and accessibility, housing and public space, nature-based and circular solutions, urban health, cultural heritage and tourism pressures, energy transitions (e.g., Positive Energy Districts), data governance and ethics, and monitoring & evaluation frameworks.
Methodological approaches are equally open. Illustrative examples include: spatial and urban analytics (GIS/RS, network/graph analysis, space syntax), model-based and AI-assisted approaches (ABM/MAS, system dynamics, digital twins, ML), policy analysis and evaluation, survey/ethnographic and participatory methods (living labs, co-creation, serious games/gamification), as well as standards and indicators (e.g., ISO/CEN) when relevant.
We particularly encourage submissions that bridge science–policy–practice, offer clear policy implications, and—where feasible—share transparent data, code, or protocols. Diverse article types are welcome, including research articles, methodological notes, comparative cases, policy/practice briefs, and replication studies.
Dr. Dario Esposito
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Urban Science is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- smart & sustainable cities
- urban resilience
- transformative change
- SETS
- climate neutrality
- just transitions
- Positive Energy Districts (PEDs)
- mobility & accessibility
- housing & public space
- nature-based solutions
- circular economy
- cultural heritage
- multi-risk assessment
- urban analytics
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